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A Saudi man hailing from the northern city of Arar has set a record by marrying 14 times during the last 37 years. Mutlaq Sulaiman, 53, said he wedded 14 women with the hope of getting a child. According to a report carried by Al-Watan Arabic daily on Saturday, Sulaiman’s wives belonged to various nationalities and different age groups. He married ladies older than him by 23 years and younger than him by 36 years. The youngest of Sulaiman’s wives was a Syrian lady who he married when she was 17. “Our married life continued for two years, but her family later forced me to divorce her,” he pointed out.

Sulaiman, a government employee working at the Education Department in the Northern Border Province, married his first wife from his neighborhood when he was 16. When his first wife failed to give birth to a child, his family, including his wife, compelled him to marry another woman, but he refused. But 14 marriages later, he was never lucky enough to have a single child. Sulaiman would occasionally divorce one of his wives, never keeping more than four wives at a time. The longest period he spent married to any one wife was eight years, while the shortest was two years. He had also given between SR 40,000 to SR 150,000 as dowry to his wives. In his family, except for his father who married five women, no one married more than once. Sulaiman married his last wife two years ago and is still living with her. She insists that she would continue to live with him to fulfill his dream of having a baby bearing his name. He is now undergoing treatment for infertility.